The very eclectic and very entertaining Michelle Shocked played at The Point, an intimate and wonderful coffeehouse style venue in the Philadelphia suburbs this past Saturday night, and just as I hoped for she played a superb and very entertaining set of music. The evening’s performance was a big surprise because it was almost totally devoted to her recently re-released, previously long out of print, 1991 classic CD, Arkansas Traveler. All the songs in the eighty-five minute performance except for the two encore pieces were from this terrific disc.
First, we need to start with some history about Arkansas Traveler. Chris Woodstra of the All Music Guide wrote "Part three of the trilogy that began with Short Sharp Shocked, Arkansas Traveler focuses on American roots music of the South, mainly rural-blues and country. According to her theory in the album's liner notes all of these songs are based on the legacy of blackface minstrels. Recorded with a mobile studio at various non-conventional locations around the country, it features an amazing array of guest musicians including Pops Staples, Doc Watson, and Gatemouth Brown." Allison Krauss, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Jerry Douglas and Bernie Leadon also appear on the disc.
Throughout the evening Shocked either played solo guitar or, when accompanied by another guitarist, she mostly played mandolin. The audience was totally engaged in her performance because she “demanded” full audience participation on several songs or she would stop the show. (I would bet the house that she was joking but considering this is an artist that once refused to go on stage because her audience was not "diverse" enough, who knows). For the title cut Shocked invited participants to come on stage and help her perform the song. Their job was to read the set up lines for several bad hillbilly jokes inserted into the middle of this "start and stop" style song while Shocked answered with the punch line. For "Hold Me Back (Frankie and Johnnie)" audience members acted out the parts of the song on stage. She repeatedly asked people to come and play guitar with her and eventually found one woman gutsy enough to play with a professional career musician onstage.
Shocked made her left-wing politics very well known even while she talked about trying to avoid heavy proselytizing throughout the performance. Her sense of humor makes her politics sound less preachy and her devotion to serious causes is what makes the onstage silliness avoid hokiness. Yet according to her autobiography in Jams, her self-published political magazine that she gives away at her concerts, she always wanted to be an activist first and a musician second.
Shocked did nine other Arkansas Traveler tracks including favorites "Come a Long Way," "The Secret To A Long Life" and "Strawberry Jam." The encore included her most well known and probably her best loved song, "Anchorage" before she closed out the concert with "Memories of East Texas" both from Short Sharp Shocked.
If Michelle Shocked comes to your town you need to see her and you must give Arkansas Traveler a very serious listen.
April 2, 2002 brought Michelle Shocked back to where she belongs. A new CD, Deep Natural, was released to the public at large. Shocked hasn't had a mass market CD release since 1991's Arkansas Traveler though she has recorded several CDs that were available for purchase only at her live performances. All of these discs had very limited pressings of only 2,500 copies or so. So don't become too frustrated if you can not locate any of them. I haven't been able to find them either.
Unfortunately, like most of you, I only know of Michelle's music from her four major label releases of more than ten years ago. (Prior to Arkansas Traveler she released The Texas Campfire Tapes in 1986, the wonderful Short Sharp Shocked in 1988, and Captain Swing in 1989). Why is this the case? Her composing skills certainly are worthy, so is her singing. Her arrangements and production values have never been questioned and she is a far better vocalist than a large portion of her singer-songwriter, rock and roll contemporaries. Is it because she is too much of a rocker, too much of a folk singer, too much of a country singer? The answer is all of the above and none of the above. Shocked ran into trouble with Mercury Records because of her eclectism and integrity. She wouldn't allow herself to be pigeonholed into one definable genre. She always wanted to record music she was proud of and loved rather than adhere to the commercialism and bottom line desires of big business. So she paid the price: No recording contract for a decade. The title of her limited edition, 1996 release, Artists Make Lousy Slaves says it all.
Some believe that Shocked's publicized biography is highly fictionalized. If the published details are true then "interesting" would not be an appropriate enough term to describe her life.
Shocked was born Karen Michelle Johnston on February 24, 1962 in Dallas, Texas to a local folk singer "Dollar" Bill Johnston and an unidentified mother. Three years later, they divorced and her mother converted to Mormon fundamentalism and married a career military man, so Michelle, in the tradition of many army brats, moved constantly. Having enough of moving, at age 16, Michelle ran away and moved back to Dallas to live with her Father who encouraged her interest in music.
Michelle completed high school & attended the University of Texas. Some sources sources claim she dropped out, others indicate she graduated. Her singing, performing, and composing skills continued to improve all during this period. After leaving the university she moved between San Francisco and New York where she often lived squatting in abandoned buildings. Eventually her mother admitted Michelle to a mental hospital in Dallas after friends alerted her about Michelle's lifestyle. While in the hospital she underwent shock therapy treatment because she was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. She was only released when the insurance money ran out. It is at this point she changed her last name.
Upon her release from the hospital the newly named Michelle Shocked returned to the Big Apple for awhile and then on to Europe where she lived in Amsterdam and then Italy where she was raped. For a time she lived in an Italian women's commune.
In the October 3, 1988 edition of Newsweek writer Pete Axthelm wrote an article called "Michelle Shocked's Secrets." He quoted her as follows: "I found out I could take care of myself on the road. I'd just squat in some building, protest a nuclear base or something, and move on. Then some guy offered me a ride to Rome, raped me and offered me money for it afterward. That drove me to a women's separatist commune. I got kicked out of there too."
Finally in 1986 she returned to Texas where at age 24, while performing at a folk music festival, a British producer heard Michelle's performance and recorded her on a Sony Walkman. These recordings become her debut CD, The Texas Campfire Tapes, which reached the number one position on the Independent record charts in Britian.
The success of the Tapes led to her major record deal, and as the saying goes, "the rest is history." Polygram Records offered Shocked $130,000 for the second album, the one that eventually became Short Sharp Shocked, but she only accepted $50,000 so that the company could use the money to record some other artists.
Short Sharp Shocked became one of my favorite albums of all time by combining rock, blues, country & even a little singer/songwriter folk. The highlight of this CD is probably her most famous song, "Anchorage," whose lyrics feature a letter written to the singer from an old friend who is surprised to find she has become a housewife but is encouraging Michelle to "Keep on rocking, girl."
Captain Swing leaned almost exclusively toward horn driven, swing tunes yet Shocked still retained an identifiable eccentric personality in her work that didn't stray far from the one she revealed to us on Short Sharp Shocked. The first track, “God is a Real Estate Developer,” is a great example of the eclectic music on this CD. Arkansas Traveler harkened back to the days of the antebellum South and black faced minstrels. It combined those influences with made for radio country-rock songs such as “33 RPM Soul” and “Come A Long Way,” which received substantial airplay on both adult alternative and college radio stations.
Those discs, with their very different musical perspectives, drove Mercury Records insane. They refused to release Shocked's gospel album. The rift resulted with the singer and the record company parting ways. Michelle may have recorded great music, and in many different styles, but to Mercury quality didn’t matter if sales did not follow. Unfortunately, it would be more than a decade until Shocked would release another CD that the general public could listen to on the radio and buy at a record store.
In 1994, Shocked recorded Kind Hearted Woman which she sold mostly at her live shows. Her singing was accompanied only by her own electric guitar playing. In 1996, with Fianchna O’Braonain of the band Hot House Flowers, Shocked released Artists Make Lousy Slaves. The two were the only musicians and singers on the disc, and again, it was sold only at shows on her Summer tour. Good News was limited to a pressing of 2,500 copies and like its two predecesors was sold mainly at live performances in 1998. The musical press gave Good News glowing reviews. If only the rest of the world could hear it someday.
Finally a new widely distributed CD available instores, double disc called Deep Natural was released in 2002. One disc features her usual mix of styles and disc two, entitled Dub Natural, is completely instrumental. Many of the instrumentals are dub versions of the songs on disc one. Inside the double CD is an flyer for Shocked's own record label, Mighty Sound, which advertises her entire catalouge along with more information about the singer and all of the lyrics from Deep Natural. According to the brochure the rare limited edition CD releases are available to the general public for the very first time but only through her website.
